Edmund Blampied was born on Jersey on 30 March 1886, five days after the death of his father. He was one of four boys and was brought up by his mother, Elizabeth, a dressmaker and shopkeeper. His first language was Jèrriais. He finished parochial school at the age of 14 and worked in the office of the town architect in St Helier. Some of his pen and ink sketches of an agricultural show in May 1902 were noticed by Mlle Marie Josephine Klintz, who ran a private art school. She gave him art lessons and introduced him to watercolours. Local businessman Saumarez James Nicolle sponsored Blampeid to art school in London, provided he tried to get a scholarship. In January 1903, barely able to speak English, Blampied set out for the Lambeth School of Art, where he studied under Philip Connard. In May 1904 he won an LCC Scholarship for two years, to continue his studies at any LCC art school. Later, he was selected to work part-time on The Daily Chronicle. His first published illustrations appeared in The Daily Chronicle on 13 January 1905. Later that year, Blampied transferred to the LCC School of Photo-engraving and Lithography at Bolt Court, for the final year of his scholarship. There he became friends with the artists and illustrators Salomon van Abbé, John Nicolson and Robert Charles Peter. At the end of 1911, Blampied set up his own studio to capitalise on the developments in colour printing and advertising, which were creating a boom for commercial artists. He turned out work for Pearson’s Magazine, The Sketch, The Sphere, The Ladies Field, The Queen and The Graphic, many of which were signed ‘Blam’. He also designed dust jackets for a substantial number of books. His etchings became known to the public through Leicester Galleries in London. On 5 August 1914 he married Marianne van Abbéa and served with the Jersey Militia in the Great War, on Jersey. Blampied was elected Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in March 1920. He was elevated to the Fellowship a year later. In October 1920 Blampied held his first solo exhibition of 28 etchings and drypoints at the Leicester Galleries. His first exhibition of drawings and etchings in the USA was held at Kennedy and Company in New York in early 1922. Blampied held another major exhibition of his work, also at the Leicester Galleries, in March 1925 where he showed 8 etchings, 25 paintings and 18 drawings. Blampied contributed hundreds of political cartoons and decorative drawings to The Bystander magazine between 1922 and 1926. At the end of 1926 Blampied gave up his work for books and magazines, sold his house and studio in south London, and travelled abroad. For the next three years, Blampied designed many prints, mostly using drypoint, dabbled in abstract art during an illness to produce what he called his ‘Colour symphonies’, and produced watercolours and oils for a major exhibition held in May 1929 at the galleries of Alex. Reid and Lefevre. When the market for etchings collapsed during the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Blampied reinvented himself as a cartoonist and caricaturist at an exhibition in 1931 called ‘Blampied’s Nonsense Show’. That brought out his love of the absurd and led to his only book, obscurely entitled Bottled Trout and Polo. Blampied returned to work for magazines in 1933 with a weekly series of illustrations of British life in ink and sepia wash for The Illustrated London News. In May 1938 Blampied was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists. Later that year, he was asked to prepare some new illustrations for an edition of Peter Pan, the rights to which had been bequeathed by Sir J M Barrie to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. The Blampied Edition of Peter and Wendy was published, and is one of the finest illustrated editions of this book. Blampied moved from London to Jersey and with his Jewish wife, but remained during the Nazi Occupation, designing the island’s banknotes and postage stamps. Blampied continued to paint and an exhibition of his work was held at the John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center and Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin in 1954. During the course of his working life, produced some 200 etchings and drypoints, and more than 80 lithographs and lithographic prints, many of which depicted rural life on his beloved Jersey. Edmund Blampeid died on Jersey on 26 August 1966, aged 80 years. He left an unfinished painting on his easel and his ashes were scattered in St Aubin’s Bay.